Android Holiday Gift Ideas Day #8: NVIDIA Shield

Those of you looking to get something for the gamer in your family, the NVIDIA Shield is the perfect gift. Why? Well NVIDIA makes epic graphic cards and great mobile processors for gaming. Now they’ve put together their own mobile gaming device, known as the Shield. It’s running a Tegra 4 processor, along with a 5-inch 720p display, 16GB of storage, and supports Wireless 802.11 a/b/g/n. It’s actually on sale for about $50 off right now, coming to you for about $249.99 right now.

The Shield does come with Android on board, so it can run just about every Android game on the Play Store. It’s also got integrated speakers and can play Steam games. The controller on the NVIDIA Shield is said to be a console-grade game controller with ultimate control. The Shield also is great for Entertainment on the go, as it is a complete multi-media theater in the palm of your hand. It’s got a great 5-inch display, that isn’t a 1080p display, but it is good enough for watching videos and playing games.

Since it does run Android, you could actually check your email, check out Google+, Twitter, etc., although it may not be as good as it would be on a phone or tablet. There are plenty of Tegra-optimized games for the Shield, but remember that it can play other games as well, that are available on the Google Play Store, or Amazon’s App store.

The NVIDIA Shield hasn’t been the best device of the year, but it’s definitely the first of its kind. I’m really excited to see the next version of the Shield and see what NVIDIA can do to improve it over the first one. If you do decide to pick up the NVIDIA Shield for someone on your Christmas list, be sure to let us know in the comments down below.